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165 The general goals of qualitative research are to gain a comprehensive overview of the research setting and to come to understand how people explain and manage their everyday activities (Greenstein 2001). My overarching goal in this research was to understand how Mexican American women made sense of their work and family lives in a disadvantaged, rural place. The main challenge for me, then, in this research was to understand the perspectives of the individuals I interviewed in the particular social and economic context in which they raised their children and sustained their families. One of the truisms of rural research is that “place matters” or “space matters.” As the United States has become increasingly urban and suburban, it is understandable that some find the study of rural spaces to be less and less relevant to a careful analysis of contemporary U.S.society.It is in this context that rural scholars assert the continuing significance of spatial analysis and many include a strong spatial component in their work (Lobao,Hooks,and Tickamyer 2007).In my research, this has meant studying the work and family lives of Mexican American women in a particular spatial setting. A work and family analysis that failed to take into account the macrostructural features of the Imperial Valley would have limited explanatory power. Specifically pertinent to my research have been its agriculturereliant economy, its geographically remote location, and its position at the border. Bringing these into clear focus served to illumine the external forces that shaped the work and family lives of the women I studied. In short, taking spatial context into account proved to be an important tool in understanding how “micro situations are shaped by wider structures” (Burawoy 1991, 282). During my time in the Valley, I was a research associate at the California Center for Border and Regional economic Studies (CCBReS) at the San Diego State University-Imperial Valley (SDSU) campus in Calexico. This association was important to me in several ways. CCBReS facilitated my work by providing me with office space, a computer, a phone, and more. The staff willingly M e T H O D O L O G I C A L A P P e N D I x 166 Methodological Appendix answered my questions, responded to my hunches, and helped me understand a complex research setting. My affiliation with the center also functioned to give me a measure of initial creditability in the community. The university in general and CCBReS in particular are well respected in the community. I believe my association with CCBReS helped open the doors of community professionals I hoped to talk with and went far in allaying the possible reservations of potential research participants. My principal data-gathering activities surrounded recruiting and interviewing women willing to participate in my research. Because I was interested in women’s experiences with child care, especially the degree to which child care concerns might impede labor force participation, I limited my sample to U.S.born Mexican American women who were mothers of at least one child, elementary school age or younger. I recruited interviewees mostly by posting and distributing a flyer that described my research. Flyers were distributed by a local elementary school and were posted in the local Boys and Girls Club and in a municipal office building. Interviewees sometimes passed along flyers to other women who might be interested in participation; one interviewee posted flyers in her place of employment on Main Street. Flyers provided contact information for either my local cell phone number or my office number at the San Diego State University-Imperial Valley campus in Calexico. I was most successful in recruiting interviewees at the Brawley One Stop Career Center. In California, many state services are administered through these local centers; among these services are job services, vocational education and rehabilitation, and youth services . At the One Stop I was able to approach women personally to introduce my research and interview interested individuals in a private interviewing room onsite . Other interviews were conducted at an elementary school and in women’s homes. each interviewee received a twenty-dollar gift card to a local supermarket in thanks for her participation. My methodology included a protocol for both english- and Spanish-language interviews. Because my population of interest was U.S.-born women, I expected that most women would be comfortable interviewing in english, but I also supposed that some would prefer an interview in Spanish. Because I am not fluent in Spanish...

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